


Dead Roses Are Still Romantic

by FoxofSpades



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Happy Ending, Unrequited Love, nico does not do embarrassment, only a little, percy is an awesome person, unconscious gift-giving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 16:44:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1717556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxofSpades/pseuds/FoxofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skeleton flowers weren’t normally considered romantic, Percy knew. Which left him baffled as to why an admirer was leaving them on his doorstep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Roses Are Still Romantic

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after.... everything in Heroes of Olympus, I suppose.

Skeleton flowers weren’t normally considered romantic, Percy knew. Which left him baffled as to why an admirer was leaving them on his doorstep. 

Not that they weren’t beautiful—no, shot through with brittle reds, yellows, and blacks, stems intertwined with smooth bony strands that curved like vines, they were strikingly aesthetic. They reminded Percy of the ones that his mother dried in the kitchen—roses from her anniversary with Paul, from Valentine’s Day. Only these were much creepier. 

It started on Monday. He narrowly avoided crushing the first, launching into an impromptu somersault to avoid smashing it as he walked out the door. He landed on a rock with a clatter of armor, and picked himself up to inspect the rose. At the time, he hadn’t given it much thought, just placed it on a table and rushed off to train demigods how to not kill themselves with pointy objects. 

That was Monday. It was now Friday, and he had practically a bouquet, so many that he’d had to retrieve an empty soda bottle from the satyr recycling bins to use as a vase. He was getting slightly worried. 

He wasn’t used to admirers. Sure, sometimes the naiads giggled at him and gave him interesting pieces of kelp, but this was different. Someone was leaving him romantic, albeit unsettling, gifts, and he wanted to know whom. 

When Percy thought hard about it, though, after the fifth rose had been placed in the soda bottle and he was left staring at his new centerpiece, it wasn’t actually that hard to figure out. No hunter of Artemis would so much as look at any male, period. It wasn’t like the Hermes cabin to play such a drawn-out prank. Ares cabin still hated him. Everyone in the camp knew he was spoken for, anyway—he had been told several times that Annabeth and he needed to turn the “totally-in-love” dial down a bit from “vomit-inducing” to plain “nauseating”. 

But there was one person who wasn’t at camp all the time, who had, in fact, only arrived on Tuesday evening, the night before the roses started. And the undead, skeletal vibe the flowers gave off totally fit their bill. 

“I think Nico likes me,” Percy said, dropping down beside Annabeth. It was dusk, and they were on their weekly picnic date, which normally consisted of well-meant teasing and staring dreamily at each other, not uncomfortable conversations about third-party crushes. Annabeth turned toward him, raising an eyebrow, and Percy drew the sixth rose from his pocket. “These have been turning up on my doorstep since Monday.” 

Annabeth took it, inspected the ridge of bone running along dead thorns. 

“Huh,” she said. “Didn’t see that one coming.” 

“For once,” Percy snarked. “Wait, you’re not mad?” 

“Why would I be?” she asked. “He probably doesn’t even know this is happening.” 

“What?” If Percy were leaving zombie flowers on someone’s doorstep, he would definitely know about it. 

“Remember the other month, when Grover kept accidentally sending Juniper singing flower valentines? It’s probably like that. Something sleep-related.” 

“Oh.” A horrible thought struck Percy. “I never did anything like that, did I?” 

“Well, one time there were these embarrassing nude statues….” 

“WHAT?” 

“Kidding, seaweed brain. No, you’ve never sent me any unconscious tokens of your affections. Go easy on Nico, though, okay?” 

“I was planning on it,” Percy said, face scrunching into a frown. “I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

“That’s a little inevitable,” Annabeth sighed. “Unless you’re planning on leaving me?” 

“Never,” Percy vowed. “I’ll figure it out. You know how Nico is, though.” 

Annabeth signed again. Last month the Hermes cabin had performed a spell that made all Nico’s clothes turn bright pink, and they hadn’t seen the son of Hades for a week and a half. When he showed up, it was with an army of the undead armed with itching powder. Embarrassment and Nico di Angelo? Not a good combination. 

It was the next day, after the seventh rose, that Percy saw Nico and decided to take the plunge.

“Nico!” he called. Nico turned from where he was talking to Rachel Elizabeth Dare about something concerning ghosts and spirits and the differences between, and frowned at him. 

“Percy,” he said uneasily. Nico usually avoided Percy, the reasons which, recently unknown and hurtful, had finally become clear. Percy almost panicked, turned and ran back to his cabin, but Rachel caught his eye over Nico’s shoulder and gave him a smile and nod. It was one of those slightly creepy nods that meant “I know what you’re going to do because I host an ancient prophetic spirit and I approve, also if you run away I will put disemboweled stuffed animals in your bed. I have a contact.” 

Percy wisely decided not to argue with that nod.

“Can we talk?” he asked. Nico grimaced.

“I was actually just about to….” 

“Go on,” Rachel said, giving Nico a shove. “I’ll still be here when you come back.” Nico glared at Rachel, his gaze quite literally threatening death, then grudgingly turned back to Percy. 

“Fine, Jackson. Let’s go.” 

Percy almost said, “Nice words for someone who’s been giving me roses,” but the mental filter he’d trained into his head caught the words before the escaped. Instead he said, “Cool.” 

Nico let Percy lead. He took the a few minutes into the woods before he figured they were far enough away from other campers and Nico was starting to look impatient.

“Nico,” Percy said, gentling his voice. Nico frowned. “Look. There’s…this is…there’s no easy….” He looked to the sky, biting his lip. He dearly didn’t want to hurt Nico, but he was sensing that was, to an extent, inevitable. “Okay. It’s just, there’s something you should know about.” 

He pulled the seventh rose from his back pocket. Nico took one look at it and turned so pale it made a difference in his normal pallor—he looked like he’d literally died. 

Percy waited for him to say something, anything, but Nico just stared at the flower, frozen like a statue. 

“Look,” he began awkwardly, and his words broke the spell. Nico ran. Percy could only stand and stare as Nico melted into the shadows and disappeared. 

“Di immortales,” he muttered, and took off. He was in tune enough with Nico’s powers to know he hadn’t left the forest—he had simply shadow traveled somewhere else inside the boundaries. 

It took Percy twenty minutes to find him, slumped against a tree, face in his hands. The ground around him was shaking, skeletal hands popping up and disappearing again, the dirt churning, grass rotting. 

“The dryads won’t be too happy about the grass,” Percy noted. Nico’s head shot up, and he looked in terror at Percy with bloodshot eyes. Percy let his hands hang at his side, smoothed his expression into something calm. “Can I come over there?” 

Nico just shrugged, shoving his face back into his arms, but the skeleton hands stopped clawing and the earth stopped shaking. Percy walked over and slid down the tree, sitting beside Nico, sneakers touching the other half-blood’s. He kept silent, trying to think of something to say. 

“I’m sorry,” Nico said, so low Percy almost didn’t hear it.

“For what?” Percy asked.

Nico raised his head, glaring at him. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be, Jackson! For liking you, alright? I know you and Annabeth are…you know, and I don’t want to upset you. Or her.” 

“Upset me?” Percy said. He ran a finger over the streak of bone in the rose. “Nico, I’m honored.” 

“What?” Nico snapped. His eyes were as dark as the pit to Tartarus, and Percy did his best to not reach out and hug him. 

“Seriously?” Percy asked. “One of the most powerful demigods I know, Ghost King, zombie-army-raising badass, likes me? Dude, I’m…like, beyond flattered.” 

“But Annabeth….” Nico looked like he’d been smashed over the head with a hammer.

“Annabeth gets it. She, too, finds me irresistible, after all.” Nico frowned, and Percy regretted the joke. “Just kidding! But I talked to her, and she isn’t angry.”

Nico snorted, placed his forehead back on his arms. 

“I’m serious! She told me to talk to you. I probably would have just let it go on and gotten really awkward around you or something, ended up making a bigger fool of myself than I already do.”

“She doesn’t hate me?”

“Nico, no one could hate you.” Nico raised an eyebrow. “Okay, so that’s a lie. How about this. Nico, no one who actually knows you could hate you. And Annabeth knows you, I know you. And the only thing that upsets me about it is that I have to hurt your feelings like this.” 

Nico shook his head. “It’s my fault, you shouldn’t feel bad.” 

“It’s not anyone’s fault,” Percy insisted, praying, for the first time in his life, to Aphrodite—that he wouldn’t mess this up. “Nico, it’s not a bad thing. It’s just a thing. It’s good. The only thing that’s not good is…you know, the fact that I’m with Annabeth. Not that that’s bad, I love Annabeth, it’s just that for this situation….” 

“I get it, Percy,” Nico said, cracking a smile. “And for what it’s worth, I’ll try to stop the flowers. It’s not on purpose.”

“I don’t mind,” Percy admitted. “They’re my centerpiece.” Nico stared at him, incredulous. “What? They’re beautiful.” 

He held the flower up to the beam of light that was filtering down through the tree branches. The ridge of bone gleamed, the streaks of yellow were illuminated like gold.

Nico sniffed and wiped a tear from his cheek, and Percy gave in to his instincts and pulled him into a hug.

“You don’t need to avoid me anymore,” Percy told him. Nico shrugged. 

“Just because I like you doesn’t mean you don’t annoy the death out of me sometimes.” 

“Glad to know some things never change,” Percy noted.


End file.
